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My concept of the branding and uniforms for the 2013 Winter Classic and Great Lakes Invitational in Detroit, Michigan.

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With news coming that the Red Wings will be hosting the 2013 Winter Classic in Detroit/Ann Arbor, I decided to come up with an identity for a couple of events that will likely be occurring that week. For those who are unfamiliar, there is a college hockey tournament held at Joe Louis Arena between Christmas and New Years, called the Great Lakes Invitational. Being that this is so close to the Winter Classic (usually on New Years Day), I decided to create a week celebrating hockey in Michigan. I call it: Hockey Week in the Mitten.

The Great Lakes Invitational has not featured 4 Michigan colleges since 1999. This provides an excellent opportunity to bring it back to 4 local schools-- all of which are exceptionally talented right now. I decided to pick Michigan State, Michigan, Michigan Tech, and Northern Michigan. This will draw people from all over the state due to the locations of the universities, and truly involve the whole state in this great event. As the logo suggests, this tournament would be held outdoors at Comerica Park.

The Winter Classic will be held in Ann Arbor, at Michigan Stadium. I used the entry gates for the stadium as a base for my logo, as they are one of the more iconic features of the stadium. The city skyline is sublimated in the background, and the freeway sign donning the Winter Classic scripts is a nod to the Motor City.

For uniforms, I used a cross of several looks from the 20's and 30's for both teams. I decided on a color vs. color matchup for several reasons. One was that most teams back in those years only had one jersey, and it was colored. The second was for viewership ease. There are going to be about 115,000 people watching the game, colors are a lot easier to follow against the white background of the ice. Finally, these are two teams with rich histories, and heavy ties to the colors they have used for nearly their entire existences. Leaving a team with only a white uniform felt odd, given the strong ties between both teams' ties with their identity and primary colors.

A mock up of the back of Michigan Stadium's scoreboard featuring Nick Lidstrom and the Winter Classic logo.